Close
by nonsequiturvy
Summary: The morning after. Missing Year.


**A|N:** _This is a (most embarrassingly late) birthday fic I wrote for **SomewhereApart** , who is an inspiration to this fandom as well as one general badass lady and friend. Love ya, Allison! Here's to soulmates, and nose kisses, and because I know how you feel about the Missing Year._

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 _Close_

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She hadn't meant to fall asleep.

For that matter, it had not been her intention to _over_ sleep either; Regina cannot in fact recall the last time the sun had risen before she did, and it's an adjustment when she blinks her eyes open to find her white silk linens splashed with every color of dawn, no longer greyed out in those shadows she's so accustomed to keeping her company at night.

A weight begins to settle then, crushingly deep in her ribcage, as the light brings with it another level of clarity. She's almost breathless with the rush of her mind filling up, image after image flashing by – of him gasping, of her arching, wanting, _yes, God,_ _more_ – but these are memories not to be confused with a dream, and what an idiot she'd been to let him see her this way.

She should never have let things go as far as they did.

…

Her first mistake had been to show him her temper yet again. He's as pigheaded as they come, the thief – more than quick to engage her fouler moods, always teasing, always smiling at her so _relentlessly_ the harder she endeavors to scowl his way.

That evening had proven no different.

He'd fairly sauntered into the banquet hall halfway through supper, carefree in a way Regina almost envied, greeting his men and looking entirely unapologetic for the long hours of his unaccountable absence that afternoon. Not that she'd worried for his whereabouts – wouldn't that be a ridiculous thing – but she had been forced to suffer through endless questioning on his behalf, from Little John or Big Harry or whatever the hell his men like to call themselves. As if she would have any more of an idea than they would, what Robin Hood likes to do in his spare time.

Truthfully, the thief's return had saved Regina a lot of trouble, though the prospect of him simply staying gone certainly carried its own appeal as well. It was the easy lines to his smile that night, the warm way he looked at her when he felt her eyes on him narrowing, that unsettled her more than he had any right to do, and an inexplicable rage at the sight of him had exploded her from the inside out.

Jaws had gone slack around the room, bites of food hovering forgotten mid-air, and not even an entreating "Regina, wait!" from Snow White could stop her from blasting out of her throne, carrying a storm with her down the center aisle as she all but flew through the door.

He'd followed her, of course. Trust a thief to take her violent dismissal of him as nothing short of an invitation, of all things.

She'd turned on him in the corridor, whip-like, lashing out with hardly civil words, contemptuous to the last while the torchlight played with his features – strong, and so very steady despite her determined wrath – but the longer he stood there, refusing to be bent by her anger, the more uncertain she grew, until even she was confused about what he'd done to set her off so.

He'd spotted his opening then, thief that he is, stealing past her guard as it wavered, stripping her slowly of the will to move away, and the walls suddenly felt too close, the space they'd left for him to approach her too little, too much, all at once.

He'd said her name, tenderly, with more care than she knew she deserved from him.

She'd burned beneath his gaze.

And then he'd kissed her.

He moved like someone desperate – desperate to touch her, or to silence her once and for all, Regina couldn't quite say in the heat of that moment. She'd forgotten the need then to spurn him the way she so liked to do, and oh how she so liked _him_ , all his gasping roughness and his desire to taste every possible inch of her, until she thought she might float away for how lightheaded he was making her feel.

He'd brought her to the point of delirium with little more than the shock of his tongue on her skin, kissing up her throat to find her mouth again and again, and though she couldn't be blamed, really, she'd never forgive herself for what she did next – the low-throated sound of his name, his groan in answer, her murmured demand for him to carry her away to her bedchambers.

They'd staggered there in relative darkness, blind as they were from the feel of each other, before falling between bedsheets, where the thief proceeded to do delicious, unspeakable things to her body that she would surely regret come morning. Still, the fit of her against him made it difficult to imagine any other way of possibly being, and she'd blame him for that much, once she had the room again – the _sense_ (stolen now, too) – to fully understand these things that were _not_ to happen a second time.

Her next mistake was that she'd let him stay.

…

She'd half-hoped he would slip out before it came to this, and she half-despairs now to know he never did like to make things easy for her.

The thief – _Robin_ , and it feels a safe enough thing to call him, in secret – is solid and heavy behind her, legs warm and wrapped together with hers, arm loosely closed over her belly. His bare chest presses at her back in slow, calm intervals, breathing deep and even in a way she cannot understand, and he is all around her, sun and skin and steadiness, everything she'd been dreading to find that she wanted from him.

Regina cannot remember a time when anyone else had lasted the night – not by fault, but by her own design. She'd always taken as she pleased from every man to follow the King, using them up to discard what remained, denying them this wrongful intimacy of morning afters that were always so disdainful to her.

There were few things the Evil Queen had to be shy about, and sex was never one of them.

And in the blackness of her bedchambers – with Robin's knowing hands and far-too-clever tongue, the sinful things he'd growled in promise – her confidence had never wavered. Something about him as he reached for her, unseeing, had set Regina on fire, the sensation of night stretching endlessly around them, welcoming the catastrophe of their bodies discovering how perfectly they came together. What she did or didn't control was her own damn choice, and oh how she'd fled, free in her ecstasy, daring to let him ravish her so, and he'd given back as good as he got, taking her, and taking, and taking.

But here, now, in daylight's sobering glare, with Robin's warmth draped quietly over her like something only natural, Regina cannot account for what had come over her. She'd thought it all hers – the darkness, the thrill, the _thief_ , even as she came undone at his command – and she realizes just how backwards she'd been, how mindless the night had made her, how vulnerable.

It all feels too precarious now, lying here with him, everywhere too sensitive for all the skin that's been exposed to his touch, his heat, his everything and what she can't let it mean to her. She's lost, too grounded by the feel of his arms, unsure what to do with her own body or how to take a normal breath, and even if she could blame him for it, she's the one who should have known better.

She'd shown weakness with him once before, running from this man in a bar, and it is weakness now, too, that she should be the one who stays.

Robin mumbles out a sound to the base of her neck, something that might be _Regina_ , but then he's shifting again in the aimless manner of one still asleep, stubble gently snagging her hair as he buries closer into her. She should breathe easier for it – there's time yet, for her to make this right – but she can't convince herself to move, and the fact that she might not want to terrifies her more than any other thing he could possibly do to her.

She forces her eyes closed, if only to see nothing but blackness again, and she wonders that he hasn't already woken to the madness her heart has become, the tight way she's wound herself up. His arm slides further over her waist, body lengthening to a stretch she sorely struggles not to match before he's relaxing around her again, and would it really be so terrible of her, to want this? To want him?

He was always intended to be hers, once upon a time.

Regina finds herself longing to turn, to catch him in this moment of slumber, without the scrutiny of those blue-twinkling eyes or that smirk he's quite fond of throwing her way. She recalls every line of his face, to a degree that surprises her, and she dwells on how they might come to life when the light stumbles on them just so, what look he might wear when unaware of any other world beyond the one with her in his arms.

But the thought of discovering these things about him is unbearable to her at the moment, the risk of jostling him awake far too great, and so she focuses instead on holding herself as still as she can, willing the chaos inside her to settle. There's a promise of peace to the quiet between them, a belonging she's half-reckless to crave, and maybe she can have this, have them. Maybe a queen as once-evil as she can be allowed to dream, just a little, for a small while.

When his lips ghost across her shoulder, heated in a way she can no longer reasonably attribute to sleep, she knows that the time for dreaming was the one luxury she could never afford.

"Morning," Robin murmurs, his voice a raspy thing that scrapes away at her in spine-tingling increments. "Did you sleep?"

Too well, she thinks, and she could almost hate him for it.

"I did," she says without turning, while he drowsily brushes more kisses into her skin. "Thank you."

There's a pause, as though he's trying to read her tone before deciding how he'd like to respond, and then the distinctly mischievous sound of him smiling as he tells her, "If I'd known what it would take to get a 'thank you' out of you, milady, I would not have waited as long as I did to pursue your affections."

"Is that what you think this was?"

The words don't cut nearly as sharp as she'd wanted, hardly deterring him from pulling her closer. Their bodies are flush now, her back curving on instinct into all that chest and muscle, the length of him already firm against her rear.

For one wild, paralyzing second, her mind is jerked back to a time she will never completely escape, when kings knew only how to take from their queens, without thought, or remorse, or consent. But Robin is no king, she knows, and she – she may be so much more than a queen, to him, from the way he's simply _holding_ her, like something to be soft with, something worth keeping safe. His hand is tracing lazy circles over her belly, wandering without intent, demanding nothing from her, and it causes her heart to swerve and halt in equal measure, this gentler touch that she finds so foreign.

"What was it to you, then?" he wonders, almost teasing, like he's in on some secret she's not privy to herself.

She's managed to avoid looking at him thus far, forcing his question to meet with a lengthy stretch of silence behind her. It should be easier this way, Regina thinks, to tell the lie that she must tell – seeing his face can only complicate matters – but something stubborn locks up her throat, refusing to so much as summon a sneer for his benefit, and it's all the answer he appears to require from her.

Robin's hands have not grown any bolder, idly exploring her dips and contours as though the feel of her alone is reason enough to go on holding her like this, but then he's nosing her hair aside, finding access to her throat with unhurried, open-mouthed kisses. She swallows back a sigh, not ready (not ever) for him to hear what sounds he's capable of stealing from her in broad daylight.

"Just so we're clear, what happened last night is not happening again," Regina tells him, though it doesn't come out so much like a command as a challenge.

"All right," he agrees easily, and she feels his lips curving into another smile against her skin.

She should bristle at him, she should, but her body no longer feels like her own, lulled into something too close to happiness, and perhaps the thief is far more dangerous than she'd ever let herself believe, until now.

Her fingers clench, finding chilled bedsheets to grasp in place of everything else she wants to feel instead. His own touch hazards higher, fingertips grazing the swells of her breasts now, and she supposes this is fine (this is so much better than fine), because this is familiar in some ways, the kisses and the caressing, the growing rhythm between their bodies that feels a lot like foreplay to her, even though she'd specifically told him – oh, what had she told him again…

But he's moving too carefully for her to comprehend, taking his time as he drags lips and stubble over her shoulder blade to the curve of her neck, finding a spot with his tongue that makes her restless with unguarded pleasure. His hands are roaming freely over her now, slow-burning a path she can't begin to follow for all the steadiness in his touch, measured and lingering, as though he means to simply savor her until she grows tired enough to push him away.

"You're cold," Robin says suddenly, stilling as he reaches the center of one breast. They hadn't exactly concerned themselves with tending to any hearth last night, focused as they were on fires of another kind sparking between them. It's more than just the room's conditions affecting her, though, Regina knows, and his attentiveness to such ridiculous matters should not bother her as much as it does.

"I'm fine," she mutters, but it's a line that's hardly worked on him before and doesn't seem to fare any better now. He's propped onto an elbow and craning around the next instant, gathering blankets back over them, and she bites into her lower lip when the tip of his erection brushes innocently over her thighs.

God, if she could just go back to despising him again.

Once they're situated more to his satisfaction, Robin leans over to drop a kiss just below her ear, then to the tensing line of her jaw as she swallows around the heaviness in her throat. She doesn't know how to handle him like this, all tenderness and leisurely calm in place of his blind fervor from the night before, the flare of impatience in him as he'd torn her out of her gown and bent her backwards, breathless, into her bed.

Her hands fist into the nearest pillow as his forehead nudges against the back of her head, the bridge of his nose sliding over all that hair he'd liberated from the various pins and baubles now likely littering her floor. She bites her lip to keep from sighing again.

He breathes her in for a long, delirious second, filling his palms with her breasts and squeezing. Her hips move traitorously into his, greedy to feel him, and he twitches against her backside, a soft groan warming her hair.

Something delicious and forbidden starts to settle into Regina, weighing her eyelashes closed, and then he murmurs to her, voice thick, "You were angry with me last night."

Trust the thief to ruin the moment by talking again. Tension leaks back into her, and she briefly thinks to deny it, for all the good it will do.

Robin moves a hand to her waist, running his palm up and down her side. "I saw it on your face, the moment I walked through the door."

"That's my face every time I see you."

The insult doesn't land quite as strongly as she'd intended, fazing him not in the slightest, and therein lies half the problem with this man.

"If looks could have killed…" he carries on, daring to sound amused, and oh the things he knows he'll get away with, with her.

He _is_ always doing something or other to warrant such a murderous reaction, she wants to point out to him. That's no secret – even his men have made panicked gestures at him whenever they fear Robin's taken his teasing too far – and there's certainly no need to discuss it now, of all times, when they've well established how incapable he is of being intimidated by her.

"No one knew where you'd gone," Regina hears herself tell him instead, and it sounds too close to a scolding, too close to her giving a damn, for her liking. There's a beat, and then a stiff, "Roland was worried about you."

"Ah."

Robin's silent for some time, resting a warm hand on her thigh now, as though giving her a moment to think she has him convinced.

All she imagines he can see of her, still, is a blanket of hair, perhaps the mulish set to her jaw, the rigid square her shoulders have formed, but she burns to know how much she's already revealed to him regardless of the limited view.

"I know you don't care at all where I went off to," he mentions at last, in a tone of great seriousness. " _But_ , should I disappear like that again and Roland" – he says his son's name very carefully, here – "happens to come to you wondering, you can tell him I've taken another stroll around Her Majesty's stables."

"Oh!" Regina says, startled despite herself. It's absurd of her to react this way – it's not as though it's a restricted part of the castle, and she's noticed even Charming take the liberty of borrowing her mares from time to time. But that the thief, who already sees too much, might learn something more of her simply by looking…she knows who he is, the risks of what he has the potential to be, and he couldn't have pried any deeper than if he'd abruptly announced he's taken to stealing apples from her private courtyard in his spare moments.

Smoke curls upward in barely-there wisps from the pillowcase clenched in her hands, and she pushes them into fists beneath her side before they can inflict any more visible damage.

"And what is it you do in my stables?" she wonders, voice betraying nothing to him.

"Oh, the usual," Robin shrugs, shifting over her until the words dance low and playful in her ear. "Casing the area, searching for things that might fetch a penny or two – I'd be more than willing to relieve you of all the fine leather that's gone unused in Your Majesty's absence."

"How very unlike a thief, to ask for permission," she remarks, darkly teasing, and his laughter is a rumble that has her arching instinctively into him again.

"Truthfully," he admits then, "I walk to admire the horses." Her breathing stills to picture him wandering, reaching a gentle hand to soothe a restless mare, whispering warm things until they're all whinnying for his attentions. "They're magnificent creatures. Beautiful. Bold. Audacious, even."

His lips find her pulse point with each pause, lingering as it thrums to his touch, and in this she cannot hide from him. His fingers are back at work on her breast, forearm anchored into the mattress as his other hand maneuvers out from underneath her to tangle with her hair.

"Regina," he murmurs on a heavy exhale, as though he's held her name in for far too long, and the sound of it knots her entire body up with a desire she's less and less able to resist. She can't be sure, anymore, whether he's talking of horses or of her, touching her jawline with that same reverence she'd just envisioned, tracing down to cup her cheek even as she angles her face further away from his.

She can't bring herself to recognize the things she knows she'll find there.

Her hips are insistent against his now, more than impatient to hurry this along. If he's read her mood correctly, though, he's only too happy _not_ to oblige – typical, insufferable outlaw – and she presses punishingly into him, relishing his involuntary grunt in response.

"If you were up to joining me some afternoon," he gasps out, not unaffected by her ministrations, "we could even put those saddles to good use again."

"Sadly, protecting unborn Charmings from my sister keeps me very busy during the day," she dismisses, almost breathless herself as she twists into him another time. His grip on her thigh slides to band across her waistline, pinning her down to him, slowing her pace into something that feels almost like torture.

"Perhaps some evening, then," Robin counters – he always has refused to cooperate when it comes to backing down from her – and she almost growls her frustration at him, lower body stilling even as the ache of want in her builds and builds.

But Regina doesn't want _this_ , doesn't want the teasing or the tenderness or the nothing-but-time he's taken with her; she wants to play with fire again, wants the raw, merciless whirlwind of the night before as they'd fucked each other senseless. She wants to bury herself back in the darkness with him, to lose her mind, and her body, and every last thought of the fact that she's known him like this, or she wants nothing from him at all.

They do not want the same things, it turns out.

He's content to remain poised just above her, his chest and shoulders and arms solid and spreading heat all around as she writhes beneath his body, but he's not doing a damn thing to _burn_ her, to make her forget, only careful caresses and quiet groans of desire as he dips down to taste her throat, her jaw, the side of her mouth.

She almost turns to meet him, to kiss him back like she's so suddenly, hatefully desperate to do, but he wants to see her, all of her, and that is something she simply doesn't know how to allow of him.

He wants _her_ , wants her beyond this four-poster bed, on the other side of these walls in whatever world lies out _there_ – where this, them, will be real in a way she's still managed to half-pretend is only a mistake, and she cannot even bear to look at his face in the sunlight. He's…he's _courting_ her, this man who foolishly believes that wanting her won't come with a price, and this is all wrong, this is not – she should never have—

Robin must sense the growing war inside her, his whole body gradually going still, pulling away in voice and touch as the pillow dips beneath his elbow. Her gaze skims the ceiling while she adjusts to the change, already chilled from the loss of him pressed over her, and she finds that it burns her in a different way.

"Regina, what is it?"

There's no accusation there, only concern, and a possible hint of resignation. It tests her patience in a way that's unfair to him, she knows, but it would've been so much easier if he'd simply gotten angry with her instead.

Fighting, she can handle. The queen in her had been bred on a battlefield, a place of bitterness and sometimes-actual-bloodshed, and it takes too little effort, these days, to slip back into those belligerent old habits. Surely there's a temper in this one, a genuine displeasure she can provoke out of him; he can't be _so_ honorable as to endure her sharpness and her cruelty and never, not once, feel inclined to return the favor.

"Regina…"

"It's nothing," she mutters, exasperation edging in. "Nothing that concerns you, at any rate."

She can feel him reaching over, drawn back to her in spite of…well…everything, and of course he would fail to play by her rules. Still, stubbornness or something else – her tendency toward self-sabotage, perhaps – has her shifting pointedly away from him, and Snow White (Henry, too, if he still had the power) would be so disappointed in her.

The space Robin had given her feels too important, now, to relinquish so soon, space that won't leave her quite as exposed or permit her body to betray itself to him – space to think, and breathe, and not do something stupid.

All impossible things, to her, when he'd held her the way that he had, and she'd strayed too far into the sensation of bliss to know where one of them ended and the other began.

"I've made you uncomfortable," Robin states, and the blunt truth of it, coming from him, has her feeling strangely chastised all of a sudden. He moves to sit upright, legs folding inward with his arms slung over the knee as he holds himself carefully away from her. "I apologize."

She keeps her eyes trained upward, focused on some speck of discoloration in the ceiling paint, a smear of black that could be a scorch mark, but even through the very corners of her vision she can tell he's no longer looking at her.

It's not modesty, not exactly, that has her bunching the sheets around her chest, cold for reasons she's still not ready to understand; she'll take her armor in whatever form she can find it, now that she knows how careless she's capable of being around him.

"It's nothing you did." Her words come out sounding wrong, somehow, even though it's not a lie. She slides up over the pile of pillows beneath her, back pressing against the chill of her bedframe, and her arms cross to hold in her shiver. "Though it's cute of you, really, to have dreamt otherwise." There's a weakness in her that's hungry to lash out, to ridicule him for presuming to think it could _ever_ be him to have such sway over her. _How like a thief after all, claiming things that don't belong to him._

"What is it, then?" His voice is unfathomably gentle, still so committed to being patient with her, and that dark, wretched part of her heart sparks disastrously in answer.

"It's…this." She gestures roughly between them, and with a single derisive look she's reduced everything they are – everything she still can't bear to believe that he is, to her – into something ugly and meaningless in her eyes. "All of it."

"I see."

Regina's having trouble reading him this time, and it dismays her more than any kindness he could have given her. She struggles against the growing heaviness in her ribcage, agitation already stirring up her insides before she's even opened her mouth to say the things that can't be unsaid. "If I may be perfectly honest—"

"Please."

"Whatever delusion you entertained about this becoming… _some_ thing…" Her lips curl around the word as though the very thought of it is distasteful to her. "Frankly, had I been warned that it would turn out to be such a hassle, I never would have indulged your little schoolboy fantasy to begin with."

Something excruciating twists and unravels her all over as she watches him process this, head tipping downward to regard his hands, fingers loosely clasped together.

"Be that as it may," he tells her evenly, "from where I sit, it certainly feels as though I've offended you beyond my usual capacity, milady."

His face is carefully blank, and there's a sort of polite detachment in how he's returned to calling her by some form of a title rather than by her name. Her gaze is again drawn to his hands – knuckles paling in their grip – and she remembers, vividly, the heat of them everywhere on her body, his touch too knowing, too intimate even as she fought the temptation to feel him closer.

More than distance seems to separate them now, and Regina is suddenly too aware of everything there – an empty loudness in her chest that feels strangely like panic, the deafening silence in _him_ , the bedding between them rumpled from the weight of him holding her not minutes before (still warm, though she can't bring herself to know for sure).

Space is what she'd wanted from him, but all she can see in all that space he's left behind, now, is something hollow and half-ruined, split painfully open in his absence. Whatever dark impulse she'd had to wound him feels as though it's backfired, and it hardens her to realize that, well, wasn't this what she'd asked for all along?

No matter how vehemently she's endeavored to push him away, it never had occurred to her that he might eventually give in.

"Some things just can't be helped," she says repressively, successful in sounding as scornful as ever. "And some people might even take pride in the fact that they've succeeded in getting under my skin."

"So I'm supposed to feel congratulated, am I, that I've done something to antagonize you?"

"This may be a difficult concept for a misguided thief such as yourself to comprehend, but being the Evil Queen is not exactly an endearing quality to most."

Her tone is borderline contemptuous, and even here, naked and sex-tousled beneath the sheets, feeling unguarded without her war paint and the glamorous getups, it is far too easy to retreat into the anger she'd once let define her world. "I've done a lot of terrible things to a lot of not so terrible people, in case you were too busy running around your forest to pay much attention."

"I've heard the stories, believe me."

"Then you should know they're not just stories."

"I can assure you it was never my intention to bed the Evil Queen last night."

She feels something inside her flinch, trying to shatter, though her face feels like it's turned to stone. "No, I can't imagine it was."

His voice goes soft. "That's not what I meant."

Regina almost sees his hand twitching as though to reach for her, but she looks away before it can fool her again. "I think you've confused me with someone who actually cares what you think," she tells him, brittle. Her legs have drawn into her chest, arms instinctively tight around the shins to make herself smaller, and her joints creak with the effort of forcing them open again.

"What I was trying to say, very poorly, is that if this is your idea of frightening me off, you'll have to do better. I know enough of the Evil Queen to recognize when our paths might have crossed." He's speaking with a sincerity that threatens to break her further, and she's intensely glad for the fact that neither of them seems able to look at the other now. "You may share a wardrobe, and a throne, and perhaps the occasional temper, but that's…I've never once seen her, when I look at you."

"Maybe you don't know what you're looking at."

"I think I do," he disagrees mildly.

Her tone drops its combative edge, the sound of it almost sensual now as a hint of the once-rampant predator in her comes out purring, and she cautions him, "Then maybe you should stop."

"Even if I knew how to do that, I haven't the slightest interest in trying, unless Her Majesty truly wishes it."

"Certainly she wouldn't want you to do anything…regrettable."

"I've made my fair share of ill-advised choices in the past, yes," he concedes after a moment's pause. The bed moves beneath him as he chooses his next words. "But if I'm to be certain of one thing, it's that the time I've spent with you, Regina, fighting or otherwise, will never be one of them."

It's not the blankets, she knows, or the sun as it continues its steady climb up the sky, uncovering bare swaths of her skin as it goes, that's left her feeling so suddenly, dizzyingly powerless with warmth.

"Then again," Robin adds, with a touch of unbearable lightness, "I am but a misguided thief, as my queen so affectionately put it."

She recovers enough of herself to admit to him, somewhat stiffly, "I know I'm not the most…hospitable person to be around."

"I daresay you have your moments. My son, for instance, is really quite taken with you." His eyes have begun to crinkle at the corners, and she knows she hasn't imagined it this time when he drops a casual hand to the bed, shoulders rolling as he stretches out his back. "Haven't the faintest idea what's gotten into him, honestly. Dreadful taste in women, I suppose, though he's bound to have inherited a thing or two from his father."

He says it with such solemnity that for a quiet, disbelieving moment Regina can only stare at him, wondering, as he shifts nonchalantly beneath the bedsheets slung low at his hips, feigning great focus in straightening out the wrinkles there.

He's been many things with her before, but never has he dared to flirt with her so openly until now, and she finds she has no clue what to do with him like this.

"You know your impertinence would have cost you your head, once upon a time. Your tongue, at the very least."

"Oh, of that I have no doubt," says Robin, very seriously. "You had the evil in your name to live up to, after all. That can't have been an easy task – I'm sure the job description came with its own burdens."

He's biting a lip, half-teasing, but he's making it difficult for her to muster up any of her old indignation. There's something like understanding in his gentle acknowledgment of her past, this part of her that he so refuses to find revolting. The tightness that's gripped at her finally starts to loosen, and she lets a hand fall to the side of her thigh before resting it carefully onto the bed.

"It is more of a challenge than it used to be," she allows, surprising herself with the something-like-slyness in her tone. "Although having a sister to destroy has served as a useful reminder." She glances coyly sideways at him. "Not to mention the company I've been forced to keep here in the castle."

He's not even bothering to contain his smile now, eyes casting playfully downward to his chest, his abdomen, lower, taking inventory of things as he observes, "My head is still attached to my shoulders, and nothing else of mine seems to have gone missing, as far as I can tell."

"For now."

"Perhaps. Still, I think the timing rather worked out in our favor, don't you?"

Regina thinks of tavern doors closing, drinks never shared and chances not taken – things he can't possibly know, things she can't possibly tell him – and she's painfully unsure how to respond for a moment. These notions of fate and timing and happily ever afters have always belonged to the heroes, not her. She's but a half-reformed villain at best, and there's never been a question, in her mind, that there could be any other kind of end to her story.

Of course, she had to find the one man who could make her believe in such stupid things as destiny again, and maybe, just maybe…

"That's debatable," she replies, but it's not a no, and it's the closest to hope she'll allow herself with him, even as something threatens to sprout wings and take flight inside her chest.

"Well," says Robin, with an innocence he's hardly trying to sell, "I'm afraid I'm going to have to call your bluff on that one." His dimples deepen and he looks positively rakish now, pulling her further and further away from the somber place her thoughts had taken her. "I happen to have it on good authority that the Queen is actually quite fond of my…various body parts. Tongue included."

He at least does her the courtesy of looking carefully elsewhere, kindly giving her a moment in the event that he's made her blush – which he hasn't, most certainly not – while she wrestles with whether she ought to kill him, after all.

Flustered, she glowers and mutters a dark, "We'll see about that."

Robin lifts a thumb to brush across his lower lip, trying valiantly to restrain his amusement. The muscles in his back and upper arm ripple as he leans his weight over to one side, closer to her, and she watches, quietly fascinated, as the bed dips slightly between them. "If the Evil Queen's planning a special reappearance to set the record straight, I'm reasonably confident that I can help her see the error in her ways."

Regina shakes her head, incredulous, but there's no mockery or malice in him – only a winking boldness to the way he's sought to disarm her from every possible side that he can, no matter how vengeful or vice-ridden he knows the blackest parts of her heart to be.

That is perhaps what has her feeling the most defenseless of all, that he could know this of her and still, damnably, want her all the same. He's not playing fair, she thinks, but then, she should've expected it from a thief; another moment stolen in her company, another kiss to leave her breathless, and she'll be just weak enough to believe she has nothing to fear in wanting him back.

Robin sobers slightly then, tilting his head to glance down toward his hand, giving her time to study him freely as he tells her, "All joking aside, Regina, I do hope you realize that there are people who see you as more than just a sum of your titles, or a few unflattering portraits from your past."

"That would be their mistake," she says gravely, almost in the cadence of a warning.

He is, as always, maddeningly resistant. "I suppose some things just can't be helped, then."

She huffs out a sigh to hear her own words so cheerfully used against her, and Robin's grin goes lopsided, fingertips tracing aimless patterns into her bedding. He lets her go on scrutinizing him a minute longer, the way his smile travels up to touch his eyes, daylight dancing over his skin just so, and she's already more than dazed by the time he lifts his head to meet her mid-stare.

His eyes are terrifically blue, twin patches of sky for her to lose herself in and feel the sunlight all around her. "It's all right to say that you don't want this, Regina."

Her lips part, but she has no voice to answer him, disquiet suddenly occupying her throat much like a second heartbeat. "And if I don't know how?" she wonders finally, the question rough as it comes haltingly out, and God, will she ever be done feeling so _vulnerable_ around this man? "What if I don't know how to want this?"

The stillness that follows stretches on and on for painfully long seconds, and when she tries to look away from him he ducks his head in gentle pursuit, brushing a knuckle beneath her chin before dropping his hand back down. "Tell me this, then – do you want me to go?"

Regina glares miserably up at him, unable to find the words for this either and almost furious that he's asked her to try. His features are strained but earnest, brows coming together as she struggles with how to respond, until she can hardly tell, anymore, which would be the lie and which would be true to the storm in her heart.

"I…"

But if there's one thing she's more and more sure of, it's that he's given her too many reasons to be selfish with him, and she doesn't know how to let him go without losing something of herself in the process. She inches recklessly forward, feeling the hitch in his breath, though he doesn't make another move for her in return.

He's honorable to a fault, this thief who shouldn't be hers, and he will be content to want her from a distance if she'll not have him any other way.

She thinks she'd like to have him every way she possibly can, for as long as she can get away with, but it's a faltering thing to admit to when she's still half-desperate to deny it. Robin appears to catch on to her helplessness then, and he leans slowly back into her, radiating heat and light and all that devastating blue in those eyes that seem meant only for her, somehow.

He doesn't press her any further, simply letting her have this silence, and if they could go on sitting here, just like this, Regina thinks she wouldn't mind waiting an eternity with him, if that's what it takes to get an honest answer out of her.

Feeling almost shy, she follows the long, lean lines of his body until her gaze is stumbling onto his hand again, sunkissed from long hours spent outdoors, sure and steady where it's anchored into the bedsheets just beside hers. She can feel the calloused surface of his palm, like a memory built into her skin, and she imagines it folding over her hand, caressing her arm, her neck, her face in that tender way she's learned he likes to do.

It's useless to envision a time when she will look at this man, at his hands and all the meaning held in them, and not fall back into this moment with him – stealing into her bed and sneaking off with her heart like something inevitable, leaving her so thoroughly thrown that she can't be trusted anymore to regret him like she knows she should.

It had been foolish of her to think space would make a damn bit of difference as far as they're concerned, when nothing short of another curse will let her forget what he is to her now.

Robin's next words are but a low rumble in her ear, and some hazy part of her registers how closely together their bodies have drifted. "Would you like me to stay?"

It doesn't feel quite as impossible to answer him this time, though she never had learned to confess herself so freely in front of another before. She schools her expression into one of indifference, glancing archly off to one side as she tells him in her loftiest tone, "I suppose I'm not stopping you."

It's the only form of an invitation he'll get from her, they both know, and he tilts his head as he pretends to consider it a moment, something mischievous playing across his face.

"I should actually get going," he says regretfully, and she might have scowled at him if she weren't so powerfully distracted by that lower lip of his, now caught between his teeth as he smiles down at her, warm-gazed.

"Yes," Regina agrees, still managing to come off as convincingly haughty. Their shoulders brush, his skin startlingly heated despite being bare from the waist up, and her resolve to sound standoffish becomes that much more of a challenge. "You really should."

"Mm." He exhales, a heavy, drawn out thrill of sensation over her throat and collarbone that feels like cheating, somehow, and she should've guessed that neither of them could be counted on to fight fair with each other. "I'm glad we've decided not to do this."

" _You're_ glad?" she hums. "I thought you'd never leave me alone." Her hand slides over the sheets, searching, and his fingers twine into hers upon contact, with painstaking care, as if feeling them come together for the first time like this.

"It did cross my mind, to be quite honest." The tip of his nose nudges into her brow, his mouth blurring most roguishly into her sightline, and then he's bringing his forehead down as her chin angles upward, until they're pressing nose to cheek. "Admittedly, this whole experience has felt a bit like trying to kiss a porcupine."

She does scowl at him, this time, and Robin pulls back enough to take in the view, his own smirk growing more and more outrageously crooked as she deliberates on how best to make him pay.

"There she is," he murmurs, like he's seen the world begin and end with her, and this – this – is what she'd been so terrified to discover of him, the look in his eyes that feels too intimate, smiling as though he wants nothing more than to wake up to the sight of her again, and again, and again.

It's disastrous of her to welcome this, to embrace what he's offering when her heart should know better than to make room for things like hope and love and second chances. Still, that forbidden knowledge comes with its own irresistible draw, and she couldn't bear to have him look at her any other way now, damned though she may be for it.

Perhaps she'll take that villain's ending after all.

Regina gazes back up at him through dark, weighted lashes, watching him bite his lip as he captures a lock of her hair, piled sideways on her shoulder, and curls it between two fingers.

His brow is furrowed with the concentration it's taken him to keep from fully reaching for her the way she knows he longs to, and she finds herself hopelessly charmed by it, that the one thing he could possibly want more than this is to be certain she wants it too.

He smiles at her, almost sheepish.

She hesitates, not wishing to let this moment go so soon.

And then she kisses him.

It's softer than she realized herself capable of, almost chaste as his lips press gently back for long, slow-lasting minutes. Her fingers tangle further with his, and she leans forward, feeling the silk bunched around her chest start to slip in tantalizing increments. His hand relaxes into her hair, resting against her shoulder as his mouth moves, unhurried, over hers, time stretching into something meaningless and infinite.

They eventually part on a gasp, both hungry for air, but it seems wasteful not to be kissing him again when he's this close and surrounded by all that sunlight, so Regina (breathless still) pulls him back in with lips and tongue, ignoring the playful noise he makes in protest.

She lifts her free hand to splay over his chest, enjoying the feel of tightening muscle as he turns into her touch. His heartbeat is strong beneath her palm, steadfast despite the echoes of danger forever carried within her fingertips – he's heard the stories, after all.

Robin doesn't even flinch, showing not a sign of unease that she half-expects from him still, learning as she is to accept how ridiculous he'd find her for it. Almost dizzy with the thought, she wanders upward, feeling his throat bob on a heavy swallow as he works to get closer too, bumping their knees under the blankets.

She'd been overeager last night, getting by with a demanding touch here and there, rushing him through the bare minimum of contact before they were both flying apart from the shock of coming together, all of it far too much yet over far too soon.

Now, though, it feels unacceptable to have access to all of this, all of him for all of time (that's how this business of meeting her soulmate is going to work, she's decided, to hell with storybooks and knowing better), and to take it for granted, not appreciating everything that's hers to touch.

She's made her bed, so to speak, and she will lie in it gladly with him, this thief who already owns so much more than he realizes of her. Maybe she, too, can steal something of his, though one could argue there's not much sense to be had in stealing what belongs to her all the same.

Resolute, Regina moves out of greed to explore what's hers, fingers itching to feel his stubble, the way his jaw tenses and angles to deepen the kiss. His tongue has set a slow rhythm against her own, gliding and tasting, sending warm little aftershocks to the throb now blooming between her thighs.

She recalls what his tongue had done to her there last night too, while she'd all but sat on his face and scrambled to grip whatever she could until something had broken – either the bedframe or her mind, she was hardly in any state to say – and the ache is a palpable thing, suddenly overwhelming.

Robin folds her easily into his arms as she climbs over him, bringing a leg around to tighten her thighs at his hips, settling their lower bodies together with such breathtaking accuracy that she nearly forgets all that time she'd determined was theirs, needing more, now, faster, again—

She moans her disapproval when his hands slide down to slow the insistent back-and-forth of her hips, surrendering the urge to feel him already thick and hard for her beneath the sheets. He's – oh, he's – trailing fingertips up her spine then, dragging away what's left of her makeshift gown, and Regina willingly presses herself along his chest instead, breasts bared and grateful for his warmth, for all that welcome friction in his skin.

"Robin," she sighs into him, unbidden, surprising even herself momentarily before she dismisses the slip-up as unfortunate but hardly avoidable lapse in judgment. She can't be held accountable for whatever ludicrous things she says, really, not when he's everywhere, distracting her with all that he is. Her carelessness is already halfway forgotten by the time she's lowering her lips back to his, threading fingers through his hair, nails light against his scalp.

But the sound of it has done something to him, something that must be addressed, and he's tearing his mouth away on his next breath, blinking up at her with a half-dazed look that makes her want to kiss him again. "Say it once more," he rasps, coarse with desire, the length of him circling firmly against the lower planes of her belly. "My name. Say it again."

"Robin," she says, then a startled "Oh!" as he bucks reflexively into her, " _Robin_ —"

He gathers her hair away from her neck, sucking wet, hot kisses down the hollow of her throat, and she slides up his torso to better give him access lower, arching when his beard scrapes over her breast. His mouth closes over a nipple, tongue deliciously rough where she is already too sensitive, craving his touch. He bites gently down, and if not for his arms at her back, steady and so very solid, reaching a hand up to cradle her neck, she thinks she might have simply fallen apart right then.

The position they've found themselves in is heavenly to the point of something sinful, though it's done nothing to dull that building ache down lower, without the exquisite pressure of him rubbing where she wants him the most. She lets him indulge in one last bruising nibble, a bite to the other side for good measure – jolts of pleasure skittering beneath her skin all the while – before she tugs commandingly at his shoulders, hips wriggling downward to get her point across. His muscles flex as he surges upward, hands falling to cup her bottom and pull her snug against him.

That's…mmm.

Yes, that's much better.

She lets her hips rise and fall, grinding slowly against his erection, releasing something primal inside her at the sound of his answering groan.

He buries his face into the crook of her neck, leaving open-mouthed kisses where he can in between each ragged pause for a breath. "Regina," he gasps, and oh, perhaps the thief had been onto something, her name reaching deep into her chest and squeezing there. Winded for reasons that she doesn't stop to think about, she finds his lips again, kissing him, and kissing him, until she feels raw all over with need.

Her hands roam his body, delighting in all that skin and well-defined muscle coiling to her touch, broad shoulders tensing to better hold her against him as though she were something delicate. His hands are no less daring with her in turn, chasing shivers up her spine, along her sides to pin her down at the waist, and there's a power in them, a strength that she doesn't share, knowing full well that she's too weak to walk away from him now.

He wanders to cup a palm over her breast next, rolling a nipple distractedly as they move their hips together, sending her arching with sparks of want. Breathless, she glances down to catch the rippling crest of a lion, black as the heart it was meant for, and then he's lifting his hand to tweak at her hair instead, pressing his wrist unknowingly alongside her cheek.

Regina turns before she's even processed the impulse, mouth lingering in a daring kiss over his tattoo, and it arrests her in place for a moment. There's something illicit about the action, as if she's just violated the most fundamental laws of magic, tearing through time itself to reach him again and know what it is to be struck by lightning for a second time.

She feels his gaze on her turn almost quizzical, unable to guess at the significance of what she's done.

"Are you all right?" he asks, voice still scratched thin with desire.

"I'm more than all right," she says, and with him, she can almost believe it.

She could explain – as if she hasn't tempted fate more than once already, finding this man she doesn't deserve, deciding he's hers no matter the cost. She could make him understand it, force the truth of his tattoo upon him such that her mistake can become his for wanting this too.

But from the way he's looking at her, like she might also be his everything, she wonders that her tale about a man in a tavern wouldn't surprise him at all – that he might simply bite back a smile to hear her tell it like something worth fearing, or feeling ashamed of, and then he'll lean in to kiss her again.

It's a troubling thought, for all the unguarded lightness it brings her, and she locks their fingers together, deliberately pulling his wrist out of sight. The rest of him follows, unresisting, as she twists them around to fall into bed, turning away and onto her side until his chest is pressed along her back again. She releases his hand when he goes to free the sheets now trapped between their bodies, but then he's reaching an arm back over for her, palm to palm against the mattress, while she shifts to feel him flush with her rear.

She's facing the balcony this time, daylight streaming in to punch tiny holes in her vision as Robin strives to rob her of her senses in other ways, kissing up her neck, tonguing the shell of her ear until she's shivering into him. She cranes around to kiss him properly, tongues a heated tangle, the movement of his mouth over hers almost sloppy as their focus is drawn further and further downward.

They're rocking slowly into each other, a flash of liquid fire licking away at her belly each time she feels him twitch, rigid and thick between their lower bodies. The arm she'd caught beneath her snakes out to fumble for her breasts, plucking at her pebbled nipples, kneading in time with their hips, and she breaks their kiss apart on a low moan.

"I need—" she gasps, and his murmured question dies halfway as she reaches between them to grasp at his cock, impossibly smooth and _God, so hard_ for her.

His grip on her hand tightens, and he deposits tongue-filled kisses over the soft, exposed underside of her jaw, making sounds low in his throat and swearing darkly as she starts to stroke him up and down. He's thick in her palm, her fingers not quite encircling him fully, and she swallows another moan at the thought of him moving inside of her. Her thumb seeks out the tip of him, sliding away skin and pressing, massaging, until he mutters an emphatic " _Fuck_ , Regina" that has her squirming, thighs rubbing for lack of the friction she craves from him there.

He's shifting suddenly then, raising the arm underneath her, and she lifts her head to accommodate until her cheek is pillowed against the bend of his elbow instead, giving him room to maneuver his other arm above her. She's briefly aware, through her lust-filled haze, of their fingers unknotting, of a lion blurring out of sight, and then his palm dragging heat between her breasts and down, down, over her abdomen, dipping at last between her legs.

He slips two fingers inside, murmuring hoarse things about how incredible she feels while she tightens instinctively around him. He adds a third then, thumb instantly drawn to where she's most sensitive to his touch, and it is her turn to cry out, little noises of ecstasy as he works her over into a state of near delirium. The long lines of muscle in his arm cord and flex against her side with his movements, his whole body aligned solidly at her back, wonderfully sturdy as she writhes and writhes into him.

Robin's breathing has grown labored, shallow puffs of air cooling her skin where a sheen of sweat is beginning to settle. She can feel every inch of him tensed with arousal, and she realizes belatedly she's let her hand go slack while wandering too close toward her own pleasure.

Renewing her grip on him, she teases her way downward, and his forehead drops to her shoulder with a strangled sort of groan, hips moving to pump himself in her hand. Still, this new arrangement is constricting, her arm more or less bound beneath his until it becomes something of a competition between them, who will be first to drive the other mindlessly wild.

"Tell me what you want," he husks into her ear after she's tossed and turned for several frustrated seconds, his fingers playing relentlessly with her now.

"I want _you_ ," Regina gasps out, hips twisting shamelessly into his touch even as she prickles to know that he's smuggled the words out of her after all. It's the sound of him smiling that has her easing his hand resolutely away before returning to his cock, trailing a finger from tip to base, fully intending to punish him for it.

"How do you want me?" His voice is impressively even as he dots measured little kisses along the curve of her throat, but there's a noticeable rumbling motion in his chest as she glides her body further up against his, hooking an ankle around his leg to better position his length between her thighs.

"Like this?" His words splinter apart at the edges as she rocks back to bring the tip of him closer, and she _mmm_ s approvingly when his hips roll in kind, fingers guiding himself further in place. His cock brushes against her, and she closes her eyes to the feel of him spreading her open, passing lightly back and forth over her inch by tormenting inch before sinking deeper.

He pushes into her with aching slowness, a luxuriant pressure that's nearly unbearable to her as she takes him in completely, the entire world gone perfectly still around them. Robin's breath leaves him with a shudder, and then he's pulling away, a sense of divine anticipation drawn almost painfully out between them before he's thrusting carefully back into her.

She keens with the movement, the angle of him hitting deep, finding some spot that suspends them both for a moment in a kind of blissful thrill that's borderline agony.

A breathy "Oh" is all she can manage before Robin is moving in earnest again, resting his forehead into the dip of her neck.

He swallows thickly, each exhale weighted with palpable want. Regina feels more than hears him speak, a vibratory hum into her skin as he murmurs, simply, "Stunning."

She clenches around the sensation of him, firm and exquisitely heavy, sliding out only to fill her again in toe-curling increments. He's deliciously tight inside her, generating a friction that verges on rapturous each time he moves, and Regina wonders if there hasn't been some cosmic oversight, that even she could be allowed to feel this way.

It should frighten her more that she could be reckless enough to allow it too.

His body slows into something more languid, hands soothing where they've settled over her breasts and belly. "Are you still with me?" he whispers, nudging his nose into her shoulder, and she blinks to realize how still she's become. "Is anything the matter?"

Ever the gentleman, as if she hasn't made him a slave to his own fate, trapping him here in this bed with her – unable to stand him too close, unwilling to think of setting him free. Or perhaps she's been the caged one, caught between a past she can never fully break from and a future that holds too much potential in his arms, locked away by a lifetime of grief and anger and nothing but miserable blackness.

She thinks she's never been on the brink of such freedom as this, with Robin strong at her back, outstretched as if to carry the world within his body while she drifts, weightless and finally, blessedly, within reach of the sun.

And oh how she's longed to fly.

"Do you want me to stop?" he murmurs, hand sliding down to her waist, anchoring there as his hips begin to draw back.

Regina shakes her head, winding her arm around to grasp at the nape of his neck, holding him to her in case he's gotten other ideas. "I'm here," she tells him, voice gravel-filled. "With you."

Always, she thinks. That's what she wants from him. The impossible promise of something like always, however long that may last them. The time will come, outside of this bed and back in that world overrun with the heroes, when she'll remember she can never be one of them. But if she could wrap herself into this moment, and spin and spin until she's dizzy from the thought of forever with this man, then it hardly seems to matter _what_ she is, anymore, her labels and her demons turned to nothing in his eyes.

It's a mesmerizing thing to consider, that she could accept this chance to start over with him, despite the danger in hoping too much. She will regret this once the world has righted itself – it will haunt her and haunt her, she knows – but she's already lost her heart to him, so.

Her heel digs into the back of his thigh, urging him to move again, and after a beat he presses back into her with all the fierceness that she'd hungered for earlier, when forgetting him felt like the only option she had.

"Slow," she says now, hips coaxing his to better match her rhythm. "Please."

He eases into the pace she's set, grip tightening on her to steady himself. "How's this?" he asks, the words hot on her ear, breathless and rough with exertion. "Is this what you want?"

His next thrust has her arching for all its exquisite restraint, and he grunts against her neck as her nails blindly dig half-crescents into his back. "Yes," she gasps, almost blown apart by the motion. "It is."

His stubble scrapes flint-like across her shoulder blade, setting off a string of firecrackers down her spine, and his lips part on a reverent sound of her name as she opens herself further to him. She runs her leg over his thighs, reveling in their muscular build, the controlled certainty in them with each upward roll of his hips.

He's warm all over, a fact she'd tried so very hard to ignore when they first found themselves like this, bodies fitting together as though belonging this way. But now it's as if she's never known anything else, and she sinks, sighing, into him as he groans quietly into her hair.

"Regina…"

She's overcome with the sudden need to kiss him, twisting back to reach what she can. He must have been longing to do the same, their mouths meeting halfway to slant awkwardly over each other while his hips grind restless circles into hers. It's a messy, hurried thing, though no less heated for its clumsiness, and eventually Robin settles for a well-aimed kiss to her shoulder instead, the mess of curls down her back, whatever their current positioning can afford him as he moves within her again.

His hands have taken to wandering, grasping at her breasts from behind, teasing each nipple before trailing lower to rub at her clit. Fingers angling downward, he slants his hips just so until his cock is brushing up against her with each thrust, and she jerks from the shock of contact, a throaty cry tumbling loose before she can help it. Robin moans in response, hand sliding out of place for a moment to splay over her abdomen.

"Too much?" He kisses his way down the side of her throat, mouth opening unsteadily over her pulse point. His chest heaves slightly against her back, and her own lungs come up short on air as she drags her hand down to press over his, unsure which of them is shaking more.

Willing her senses to slow, Regina carefully guides his hand back up her body, letting him take his time, lingering over each new curve they encounter. He pumps shallowly in and out of her, the feeling no less pleasurable for it but easier now not to drown herself in, and she finds that his tenderness is intolerable to her in a different way this time, for all the pain she'll know whenever it's gone.

"Just right," she sighs, and Robin kisses her again.

He carries on making a map of her body, fingers spreading wildfires as a lion roams free across her skin, touching her with the odd familiarity of one who's somehow known her for years. Years she'd spent grieving, years she'd spent _hating_ , cursing and cursing away other people's happiness until she no longer had the breath (until she no longer had the heart) – only to have them lead her here, as things like fate are rumored to do.

And Regina has grown so tired of trying to outrun them.

She weaves her fingers underneath his, joined hands sliding over the bedsheets as his spine stretches, muscles tensing, and then he's pushing with his whole body into her, nothing but slick and glorious friction between them.

"Gods," he utters, the sound of it muffled into her neck as he rocks inside of her, and she shifts with the paralyzing intensity of it, so close now that she thinks she could soar. "Regina, I—"

Suddenly terrified, she clenches his hand with a wordless cry, settling her hips more forcefully against him as he thrusts and thrusts into her, and they surge together, climbing higher, cresting the clouds of some storm, whatever he'd been about to say now lost to a trembling ecstasy as it courses through them both in shuddering waves.

She's struck with a second, headier jolt of satisfaction when he reaches down to stroke at her again, moaning harshly into her skin, hips moving erratically now with the last thrills of his own pleasure. His cock grazes too-close to her clit as he ruts into her, his fingers already sending her halfway back over the edge, and she arches, gasping, into him another time, swept away by the delirious sensation of falling endlessly apart in his arms.

Regina's more than unfocused when she eventually opens her eyes, vaguely aware of their bodies rearranging themselves as he pulls gingerly out of her with a small groan. She feels them collapsing back together the next instant, spent, gravity drawing them in and in until they're an indistinguishable tangle of heat and limbs and a single, shared heartbeat.

Robin's forehead falls to nestle into the hollow of her neck, and she tilts her chin carefully sideways to rest a cheek over his hair, everywhere relaxing to some splendid degree.

Seconds stray, dream-like, into minutes before their breathing starts to even out at last. Once she's reasonably in control of herself again, she turns fully into his embrace, arms folding against his chest while their legs intertwine, slow-dancing between the sheets. He straightens as she curls into him, moving halfway over her before dropping a palm to ghost along her side, caressing aimlessly from breast to hipbone and back.

She nudges her nose into his with a content little sound, feeling his satisfied hum in reply.

He bends to kiss her, mouth settling over hers like warm honey, and she traces tentative fingers across his jawline while he reaches with a calmer hand to wrap around her back, bringing her closer. Their tongues glide together without any sense of urgency behind it, though they're both panting slightly by the time they finally part, lips hovering in a not-quite-kiss as their noses tease at each other again.

"Still a porcupine?" she inquires breathily.

Robin smiles down at her, everything about him so easy, somehow, so wondrously light.

He claims her hand again and presses a kiss, achingly gentle, to each of her fingertips, his smile taking a naughtier and naughtier turn as he goes. She feels a blush of all things rise to her cheeks as she blinks expectantly up at him, wondering how to brace herself, fingers lingering over that mischievous lower lip, and then he's swooping in to tickle the side of her ear.

"I wouldn't have you any other way," he confides in a whisper, like it's some secret (they both know better, now), and she thinks of pushing him away but doesn't.

He gathers her into his arms, tucking a lock of hair back from her face as he gazes into her eyes, silence and stillness and something like peace held there just for her, and she couldn't possibly look away from him now, even if she truly wanted it.

She could let him love her, she thinks.

She could.

She could.

(She does.)


End file.
